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LET’S RETURN to the Beltway media fan club of John McCain, whose
numbers, impossible though it may seem, probably top the throng of
adolescents who would kill to give Leonardo DiCaprio head. What’s
pathetic about the McCain idolatry is that liberals (some of whom know
in their heart that Bill Clinton is a dreadful man and possibly a
traitor) are trying to redeem themselves with a Republican whose spikier
policies are Democratic.

First, a few excerpts. Charles Lane, recently deposed editor of The New
Republic, wrote: “I know it shouldn’t be happening. But it is: I’m
falling for John McCain... My family and friends [and apparently TNR
owner Marty Peretz, gone bonkers as his protege Al Gore melts down, thus
losing Marty his dreamed-of position in the kitchen cabinet] might
disown me for succumbing, even tentatively, to the allure of a
Republican, and a pretty conservative one at that. But the guy is
running such a terrific campaign, speaking so forthrightly about so many
matters of real substance, that I just find him irresistible.”

Abe Rosenthal, in the Sept. 24 New York Times: “Given his life and
nature, Senator McCain probably doesn’t think his attempt to free his
party from Buchanan is particularly brave. It wasn’t, except among
Republican candidates. But Senator McCain’s comments had the perfect
pitch of political goodness and decency. We owe him thanks and an
embrace for reminding us what they are like.”

Richard Bernstein, in a Oct. 1 Times book review (he pegs McCain’s
imprisonment at seven years): “Still, McCain’s description of what he
and his fellow prisoners endured is gritty and moving. He shows
admirable restraint here. He tells us about being regularly beaten or of
having his arms roped and pulled behind him and left that way overnight,
but he does not ask us to share his pain.”

Funny, but it seems that’s exactly what McCain is asking: share my pain.
Why else would he publish a book, which could have been written anytime
after his release since the narrative ends before his political career
started, during his presidential campaign?

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, admittedly a smart man who simply chose the
wrong occupation, is beyond the pale in his sheeplike writing about the
ethically challenged McCain.

(Why has the Senator’s involvement in the
Keating Five scandal been mentioned so infrequently this year? Seems to
me that this relatively recent misuse of power is far more important
than whether George Bush snorted cocaine a generation ago, as a private
citizen.)

McCain

When it comes to self-aggrandizement, Weisberg is no slouch,
so when he sprinkles asides like, “[McCain] told me on the plane—a plush
Citation borrowed from Rupert Murdoch...” it gives you a hint of what’s
to come. Weisberg, on Sept. 29, wrote: “McCain thinks the fact that
special interest money dominates the electoral system is a big part of
the reason that a majority of 18-26-year-olds don’t register and don’t
vote. He sees political corruption [like the Keating Five, maybe?] not
just as an Augean stable to be cleansed, but as a positive issue that
can serve to re-engage the disaffected electorate.”

Please. Most Americans don’t vote, except the elderly who still feel
it’s part of their duty as citizens. Does Weisberg really think that
McCain’s ludicrous campaign finance reform proposal, which will never be
enacted, will lure young men and women to the polls on Election Day? Uh,
no.

Weisberg continues: “McCain has not yet managed to communicate his
charisma in public, or to the young, in anything like the way John F.
Kennedy once did. But his ‘new patriotic challenge’ seems to strike a
chord nonetheless.” Why, Jake? Because you and 200 other sycophantic
political reporters get off on McCain’s off-color jokes when you’re
having a beer with him in a New Hampshire hotel?

Roger Simon, in the Sept. 27 U.S. News & World Report: “John McCain
wiggles around in the seat, leans the back of his head against the
window of the bus, whips out a pair of dark, happenin’ sunglasses that
make him look like Sen. Blues Brother...”

Ultraliberal Bill Press and conservative Mary Matalin were like fawning
schoolgirls after interviewing McCain on the Sept. 13 edition of
Crossfire.

Matalin: “Are you ever not inspired by John McCain? That he’s setting
new rules for politics? He doesn’t attack anybody. You’re just for him
or you’re against him—simple as that. He’s an American hero.”

Press: “I agree with that. I have one thing to say: Please, please don’t
make John McCain the nominee of the Republican Party. That’s all I ask.
He’s refreshing. He’s gutsy. He’s independent. He makes George W. Bush
look like yesterday’s newspaper. And you—you’re not smart enough to
nominate him.”

Peter Kann, The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, concluded a book review
of Faith of My Fathers by saying, “John McCain, in this or any other
political season, stands as an oak among saplings.”

Never underestimate The Boston Globe’s hack pundit David Nyhan for
supplying a doozy of a quote. He wrote on Sept. 24: “And that is the
best reason why the 99.6 percent of Americans who do not live in New
Hampshire should begin to pay attention to the Captain Dauntless of the
Republican field. You want to clean up politics, then Crash McCain is
your New Hampshire man. Even Democrats should write him a check.”

And always count on Time’s Margaret Carlson to agree with her friends on
the DC cocktail circuit. In her Oct. 11 column, while savaging Bush as a
daddy’s boy, she lavished praise on McCain: “McCain is no saint (he will
tick off the reasons he isn’t, if you don’t beg him to stop), but he is
the natural, solid alternative should there be second thoughts about
Bush’s preemptive coronation. Many people at the rally in Nashua
clutched McCain’s book and approached him for his signature with
something like reverence. One man carefully removed his copy from a
Ziploc bag to get the Senator’s autograph, then carefully tucked it back
in the bag. He didn’t want any smudges or dog-eared pages. It’s not a
coffee-table book, but that’s where he planned to display it.”

You have to wonder. If there’s all this “reverence” for McCain, why does
he attain only single digits in most polls for the GOP nomination? Why
has he raised so little money? Why haven’t more of his colleagues, in
utter awe of his “story,” rushed out to endorse him instead of the
“callow” Bush? Maybe because members of Congress know McCain in a way
reporters don’t. Chew on that.

Hunt

Finally, the worst for last. Albert Hunt (who counts McCain’s internment
as six and a half years), in last Thursday’s Journal, wrote the most
obsequious piece yet about the Arizona Senator, a man he won’t even vote
for should he become the GOP nominee. “He is the ideal antidote to the
Clinton years—an unusually honest politician, a straight-shooting
genuine American hero, a man you’d like your children to emulate.”

A few points: Hunt was a steadfast defender of the Clinton
administration, through all its dishonesty, sleazy surveillance of
innocent citizens and unprecedented illegal means of political
fundraising. Second, McCain is a shrewd pol, not the aw-shucks “guy”
that reporters crack up at, and is cynically trying to exploit, without
much luck if you look at the polls outside Washington newsrooms, his POW
history. In Arizona he’s considered a shady businessman, with a
questionable personal life, who even lost the endorsement of the state’s
governor, Jane Hull, to Bush. Third, leaving aside my two sons, I
wouldn’t want their Beanie Babies to “emulate” McCain.

Finding a writer who isn’t dewy-eyed over McCain is rigorous work, but
they’re out there. For example, Vietnam vet Nathaniel Tripp wrote in the
Oct. 3 New York Times: “Furthermore, civil leadership demands humanity,
compassion and the skills of negotiation and compromise, which are often
contrary to the military mind. Chimerically, McCain may go from the
Keating scandal to campaign reform, from heavy smoking to anti-tobacco
legislation, setting a zigzag course toward the White House and defying
those who would put him in a box. But there is something hauntingly
familiar about his confusion of mission with personal ambition.”

I asked Amy Silverman, a Phoenix New Times reporter who’s covered McCain
for years, her reaction to the Senator’s precious status within the
Beltway. She replied: “John McCain is a politician. The fact that he
poses as a maverick…makes it even worse. I’m horrified by the way that
he’s used his POW status to garner favor. He’s done it for years, but
it’s gotten much worse in recent months. McCain is a master at milking
his war hero story for all it’s worth. He manages to do it in a way that
allows him to emerge as humble, by having others tell the story for him.
Using his [Vietnam experience] as his base point, McCain has been able
to position himself as a maverick on issues like campaign finance
reform, tobacco, gun rights, etc.

“He postures as a progressive on subjects that he took the opposite
stand on relatively recently. In the 80s, before the Keating Five
scandal, he repeatedly voted against campaign finance reform measures in
the Senate. He used to take tobacco money. Ditto for NRA money.

Furthermore, the measures he supports today—like the tobacco and
campaign finance reform bills—are almost assured of failure. So he get
points as a renegade and sucks up to the Beltway crowd, without having
to do anything. It all comes back to his hero status: who wants to trash
a guy who was beaten and mistreated by the gooks for almost six years.

Finally, McCain gets sucked up to because he does his own share of
sucking. He lets reporters feel special, like he’s being extraordinarily
candid for them, giving them extra access. It’s all part of his shtick.”

Nashville: A DC Outpost For Gore

A friend of mine suggested that Al Gore’s yearlong implosion is so
disastrous that he might drop out of the Democratic presidential race by
New Year’s Day. Hyperbole, sure, but the odds on Bill Bradley taking the
nomination are certainly better than 50 percent right now, despite what
national magazines and newspapers might say.

(For example, the clueless
Newsweek, in its Oct. 11 issue, commissioned a poll matching up Gore and
George W. Bush, and then added in Pat Buchanan as a third-party
candidate. Bush won in both faceoffs, but the telling point is that
Bradley wasn’t even included.)

Gore’s announcement last week that he was moving his political
operations to Nashville so that he could traipse around Kmarts, looking
for the soul of America, was such an obvious gimmick that even the most
naive political reporters had to laugh. The best line of the week goes
to CNN’s Tucker Carlson who, appearing on Larry King Live last Wednesday

Carlson

night, said: “Well, I mean, obviously going to Nashville gives Gore the
chance to slop the hogs and run the mule team, etc. I do think that it
does seem a bit desperate. And I have to say, you do feel sorry for
those people [Gore operatives moving with him to Tennessee]. I mean,
where is Tony Coelho going to eat lunch in Nashville?” Coelho feigned
enthusiasm, saying, “We anticipate the group in Nashville will be leaner
and hopefully tougher. I’m packing my bags and learning country music.”

But later in the week, it was apparent that Coelho, just one of Gore’s
many personnel mistakes, had bigger problems than finding a tony
restaurant in Nashville. Last year, as the commissioner general for the
United States pavilion at the World Exposition in Portugal, Gore’s
campaign chairman, according to Sunday’s Washington Post, was on the
take. “A report by the Office of Inspector General cites improper use of
free airline tickets, luxury cars and apartments provided for the
taxpayer-funded exposition; the hiring of Coelho’s niece and of two
stepsons of Ambassador to Portugal Gerald McGowan; and approval of
excessive payments on contracts.”

Like pollster Mark Penn, it’s just a matter of days, possibly a week,
before Coelho is shown the door. Naturally, Gore’s first instinct was to
defend his historically corrupt friend. On Face the Nation last Sunday,
Gore, dismissing the charges as “inside baseball,” said: “I haven’t seen
this report, but I know him, and he is going to continue doing the
terrific job he’s been doing as my campaign chair.” As if Gore needs
more trouble, a new poll in his quasi-native Tennessee shows him running
behind Gov. Bush by 51-42 percent.

Carville

Reptilian James Carville, Clinton’s attack dog in ’92 and during the
President’s various scandals, said on the Sept. 29 Crossfire that he’s
in favor of the move to Nashville. Carville: “I’m telling you there’s a
change in attitude. And I think it’s good that they’re going down to
Nashville. The people are nicer and the music is better... You know, the
Vice President is the most qualified presidential candidate that we’ve
had in a long, long time. He has more experience than everybody in this
race put together... The Republican Party is dead. The Congressional
Republican Party is dead. Now the presidential Republican Party is dead.
These guys don’t know whether to wind their ears or scratch their
watches, okay?”

Okay. If Gore loses Carville, the only supporter he’ll have left is
Tipper, the stand-in drummer for the makeshift Grateful Dead.

Gore sucked in both Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and the Times’ Bob Herbert
during interviews last week. Displaying his new down-home makeover, he
regaled both with a quote from Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby
McGee.” Alter’s version: “Gore: ‘In the words of Janis Joplin, freedom’s
just another word for nothin’ left to lose.’” Herbert wrote on Monday:
“He quoted Janis Joplin: ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left
to lose.’” Didn’t either of these genius journalists, or their
factcheckers, realize that Joplin didn’t write the damn song?

Bill Clinton, who’s sabotaged Gore’s campaign at regular
intervals—comparing him to Nixon, getting publicly steamed when Gore
belatedly criticized his affair with Monica Lewinsky, calling a Times
reporter to give tips on the campaign—was at it again last Friday in a
speech before a Democratic National Committee meeting. “This is not an
election yet,” Clinton told his audience. “I mean, the election may be
going on in the newspapers every day, but here, in the minds of the
American people, they still think we should be drawing a paycheck to
work for them.” This, of course, is preposterous. The primaries will
essentially be over in March; Gore has changed the direction of his
campaign so many times, always for the worse, that he’s beginning to
look like a longshot for the Democratic nod. Yeah, he’s locked up all
those establishment “super-delegates,” but they can change allegiance at
any time.

And, if you believe The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, a stretch I know,
Clinton is at it again. In the current edition of the weekly, Mayer
writes: “In a recent conversation, President Clinton suggested to a
confidant that the only reason Gore ever sought the Presidency was to
please his father, Tennessee’s Senator Al Gore, Sr., who died last year.

‘The President,’ this friend says, thinks that ‘a lot of Gore’s baggage
is his father.’” Man, when the moxie genes were handed out, Clinton went
back for fifth helpings. What nerve he has to talk about the late
Senator’s “baggage” when it’s his own that’s killing Gore.

Clinton is not a rational man and that may explain why he wants Gore to
lose. He’s so self-absorbed, he’d rather have a Republican in the White
House than Gore be proven a better president. As for the Vice President,
he stands for nothing and therefore only people who have
patronage/transactional reasons to be for him are for him. Now, if Gore
had a lick of moonshine sense, he’d have resigned his office on
principle last year, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, setting him
apart from all the rest of Clinton’s entourage who disgracefully let
their boss lie to them and still remained at the White House. Talk about
integrity! He’d be at least even in the polls right now with Gov. Bush;
Bradley wouldn’t even matter. Instead, Gore, on the day of Clinton’s
deserved impeachment, said his boss would be remembered as one of the
greatest American presidents. That’s a sound bite we’ll be seeing in GOP
commercials from March of next year till Election
Day.

JWR contributor "Mugger" -- aka Russ Smith -- is the editor-in-chief and publisher of New York Press. Send your comments to him by clicking here.